With awards season in full force, it seems like each week brings a fresh set of winners from the various guilds, societies, associations, and what have you. This past weekend saw both the International Animated Film Society, ASIFA-Hollywood’s Annie Awards and the Art Directors Guild Awards, with Rango, Hugo, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2, and The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo emerging as the big winners. Check out the list of winners after the jump.

Given that Michel Hazanavicius‘ The Artist and Martin Scorsese‘s Hugo are both about the joys of filmmaking and film-watching, it’s a little ironic that incidents at recent screenings of the two pictures seem to highlight some of the ways that the modern moviegoing experience can go terribly wrong.

In the UK, customers demanded refunds upon realizing that The Artist, a tribute to silent films, was itself a silent film. Meanwhile, one unlucky New York audience had the ending of Hugo ruined by advertisements that suddenly began playing over the movie. Read more after the jump.

Early this morning the BAFTA nominations were announced, after a couple rounds of ‘longlist’ reveals. One of the big Oscar frontrunners, The Artist, walked away with 12 nominations, including Best Film, Director, Original Screenplay, Leading Actor and Leading Actress. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy gets a moment in the sun with 11 nominations — not really any surprise that the film would get lots of BAFTA attention — and Hugo took 9 nods, though mostly for smaller categories.

Drive, which has mostly been ignored in the US awards rounds so far, got a nod for Best Film, and Attack the Block and Submarine were both nominated for Outstanding Debut By a British Writer, Director or Producer.

Check out the full nomination list below. The Orange British Academy Film Awards take place on Sunday 12 February at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, London. The ceremony will be hosted by Stephen Fry and will be broadcast exclusively on BBC One. Read More »

Each year American Cinema Editors (ACE) recognizes the best editing of the year in narrative film, documentary and television through the Eddie Awards. The nominations for achievement in 2011 have been released. They include a couple of expected films such as Hugo and The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, and feature a couple other inclusions that might count as surprises to some.

Briefly: Here’s the award nomination for for those whose interest in film runs just a bit deeper than others. Today the American Society of Cinematographers (ASC) announced its nominees for Best Cinematography of 2011. The nominees are: Guillaume Schiffman (The Artist), Jeff Cronenweth (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo), Robert Richardson (Hugo), Hoyte van Hoytema (Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy), and Emmanuel Lubezki (The Tree of Life).

One film not on the list, War Horse, shot by Janusz Kaminski, seems like an obvious snub. But Kaminski resigned from the ASC several years ago, so he wouldn’t have been nominated for any award by the group. Discuss among yourselves whether Jeff Cronenweth (who also shot The Social Network and Fight Club) would have nabbed the nomination had Kaminski been eligible.

The ASC will announce the winner of the award for best cinematography in 2011 on February 12, and that winner will very likely go on to win the Oscar for Best Cinematography as well.

It’s official: 2012 is the year we all learn to pronounce ‘Hazanavicius.’ That’s because Michel Hazanavicius, director of The Artist, is one of the five people nominated for the Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Feature Film by the Directors Guild of America (DGA). The DGA award nominees almost always mirror the Oscar ballot for Best Director, so between this and the PGA nominations announced last week we’ve basically got the final Oscar contention list locked down.

The full nomination list for the DGA awards is Woody Allen (Midnight in Paris), David Fincher (The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo), Michel Hazanavicius (The Artist), Alexander Payne (The Descendants), and Martin Scorsese (Hugo). Read More »

It’s no secret that the Alamo Drafthouse is the best theater chain in the country. Sure, it’s small, but the passion they have to create the perfect environment to watch a movie is unparalleled. Case in point, their hugely popular No Texting public service announcements, incredible in-theater food selection, stunning repertory screenings and so much more.

As the new year begins, the entire staff of the Drafthouse voted on their favorite films of 2011 and selected /Film as the outlet to exclusively premiere their list. It’s extremely eclectic (The Muppets, Beginners and 13 Assassin all made the cut) but you’d be hard pressed to find a better cross section of the best 2011 had to offer. Check it out after the jump. Read More »

The process of doling out Oscars is a lot more transparent in some than in others. While the core categories like Best Picture, and writing, directing and acting are all the subject of great speculation for months before the nominations are even announced, The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is much more open about what specific films are in contention for some technical awards.

For instance, there is the Visual Effects Oscar, for which the Academy today announced that ten films are in the running. They include most of the options one might expect, from Hugo to Mission: Impossible to Rise of the Planet of the Apes. The full list is below. Read More »

Here’s your best indicator yet as to what the crop of nominations for the Best Picture Oscar is likely to be. The Producers Guild of America (PGA) has announced its nominations for 2011 awards, which will be doled out on January 21.

The ten films nominated for the PGA’s top honor include expected pictures such as The Artist, The Descendants and War Horse. There are no real surprises, but the growing Oscar chances for The Help won’t be hurt by getting a PGA nomination (would be slightly wild to see Chris Columbus, a producer on The Help, with an Oscar), and Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris makes an appearance on the list, too. There are a couple surprises, though, in the form of Bridesmaids and The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo — the Judd Apatow and Scott Rudin effects in full force there. With 5-10 Best Picture nominations possible for this year’s Oscars, most of the films in the PGA’s top list are likely to end up in the race.

The full PGA press release, with the full slate of nominations, is below. Documentary and animation nominations are there, too, though the slate of nominations in each category is more or less exactly what you’d expect to see at this point. Read More »

I find it difficult to say whether 2011 was an unusually strong or unusually weak year for films. As in any year, there were pleasant surprises and disappointments alike. If I had to pinpoint the one thing my favorites tend to have in common, though, it’s a sense that each of them were made with great love by people who cared desperately about them.

I don’t think there’s anything anyone can say at the start of a top 10 list to totally deflect the disgruntled comments from readers who incensed to see that X made my top 10 when Y didn’t, etc., but I’m still going to throw out the usual caveats. There are certainly deserving films that were left off just because I forgot about them, or because I missed the theatrical run, or because I couldn’t fully appreciate them due to my own biases, or what have you. I also want to acknowledge that there is no fair way to compare, say, Bridesmaids against Tree of Life, but that by ranking these movies I’ve done so anyway.

Finally, and most importantly, I’d like to stress that this is not intended as an objective list of the ten best movies of the year, but as a totally subjective look back at my personal favorites of 2011. Read my list and leave your thoughts after the jump.